


some boyhood bravery

by Anonymous



Category: Marilyn Manson (Band), Nine Inch Nails (Band)
Genre: Drug Addiction, Inspired by Music, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, Young Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 15:09:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21101507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Love doesn't last. He knows.And it wasn't perfect, but it was close enough.





	1. final glances

**Author's Note:**

> This is depressing. 
> 
> Title from and based off of "Poison Oak" by Bright Eyes.

It rains and rains. 

A storm's rolling through somewhere, a real one, the kind that causes _devastation. _

Devastation. He feels it now, coiling around his heart like a snake, squeezing the little life he has left out of him. 

The rain is soaking through his hat, his black jacket, rolling down his cheeks and over his nose. There's some girl holding onto him, sobbing into his already-soaked clothes, but he hardly notices and he definitely doesn't care. 

There's a hurricane raging inside of him.

The rain falls onto the shining black lid of the casket as they make the move to lower it into the ground, all the pallbearers looking wet and miserable, pale and exhausted.

They step aside, watching as the preacher starts his spiel, one he's probably used before for multiple people, even though there's a boy lying in that casket that was alive when he did it all those other times. 

A _boy. _A real boy before he was just a body. A boy with a heartbeat that was healthy and strong, a heartbeat that he used to listen to when they were drunk and he needed something to lull him to sleep.

A boy with a weird-ass smile that was his alone, -- a smile he wasn't ever going to see on another person again, lest he fall to the ground and die on the spot from the pain it would surely inspire in his chest.

A boy that made him laugh and cry and put a dollar to his nose, breathe in, coming away gasping and falling into his arms as the burning spread through him and the love of his life quietly mumbled, "yeah, you're doing good." 

A boy that made him scream and pull at his own hair and reach out to push him into the wall, the very passion that the stupid bastard ignited in him driving towards a violence that suited him quite well. 

A boy who inspired the first _I love you_s and _I hate you_s that had ever meant something when they passed from his lips. A boy who he was addicted to: his lips, his hands, his heartbeat, the drugs he gave him. 

His boy. For better or for worse. 

_For worse, _ he thinks as that girl pulls away from him, both of them looking on with an unfortunate look of surprise as the casket gets lower, lower, towards the point of no return, goodbye forever. _Definitely worse. _

An old man picks up a shovel, starts coughing as he throws heaps of wet dirt over a casket containing what used to be a boy. 

A boy. _His _boy.

He turns around, facing the rain blowing in from the direction he had traveled here in, the storm he bought with him.

He clenches his hand into a fist, walks towards that torrent despite the stranger-woman calling out to him, saying his name like he's an old friend, rather than a stranger, connected to her only through pain.

Even then, it's not the same pain. He knows it's not.

She'll recover. Her life will just be marred by one empty space, one that will cause her great pain, but, logistically, one that never truly needed to hold anything in the first place. 

But him?

Well, his fucking heart might as well have stopped beating. He wants to be buried, too. He wants to lie on top of that casket and fall into a deep, dark sleep.

He wants to believe. Believe that he can see him again. 

He keeps walking, even when the wind threatens to knock his frail frame to the ground. He challenges that godawful storm, wondering if its rage comes close to matching the fury within him, -- doubting it does, too. 

And if it does... Well...

He'd be happy to let it kill him.

_Love,_ he thinks as he walks towards oblivion. _Everybody wanted to sell that to me as a kid. To save me. Said it was some perfect thing that lasted forever_. 

A raindrop lands perfectly in his eye.

_What a stupid fucking lie_. 

Love doesn't last. He knows. 

And it wasn't perfect, but it was close enough.

Somehow, he finds himself at a store window. He turns to examine himself in the glass, laughs at the hideous monstrosity that returns his glare.

Close enough for him, anyway.


	2. first meetings.

_One year earlier..._

Trent thinks the boy is peculiar looking. 

He has black hair that shines and hangs to his waist like a girl's, long limbs that he knows would make him even clumsier but that seem to exude grace on _him, _skin pale as a winter morning's sky, warning of coming snow. 

Trent watches him, making his way through the crowd with a determined sort of intent that he can sense. With his every move, some kind of hypnosis seems to kick in, setting Trent's heart to a lazy flutter.

_You are getting very sleepy..._

Suddenly, the ebony-haired boy stops his stride and turns around, something like paranoia seeming to take hold of his relaxed stature. Some sort of trouble seems to have found him, causing him to go frantically searching for the cause. 

He seems to find it as two sets of eyes meet from across a crowded room.

_Holy hell._

Not only does he potentially have a psychic streak, what with the sensing being watched and all, but his _eyes. _

They're fucking weird. More light in one than the other or something. 

It isn't until he's right up on him that Trent figures it out. One is a vibrant blue, the color of summer days when he was little, warm and bright and seeming to stretch on forever. The other looks black, -- the dreaded night finally coming, his grandmother rushing outside, urging him to come inside and wash up just as he was beginning to marvel at the stars. 

_They're two different colors,_ he thinks. _Like Bowie's._

Suddenly, those eyes are right before him, boring into his. Trent's too drunk and awestruck to even blush.

He notices something silver gleaming through the corner of his eye as an unfamiliar deep voice cuts through the discordant club noise. "What are you looking at?"

"I..." Trent's tongue is thick, seeming to be quite fond of the roof of his mouth all of the sudden. Tied. Twisted. "I just..."

Those multicolored eyes go gently narrowed, tilting upwards. It's only then that Trent's vision allows itself to focus. 

That silver gleam is a ring in the corner of the boy's lips. His hair falls over his shoulders, eventually blending into the black fabric of an old KISS T-shirt, tattered and riddled with holes. His face is... Strange, severe, each feature sharply contrasting with the rest in a way that hardly even seems real, like he's something that somebody painted. 

"Like what you see?" he asks suddenly, that lip ring sparkling even brighter in the neon light flashing above them.

Slowly, and with much effort, Trent nods. 

"Yeah," he menages. "Yeah, I do."

And he really thinks that he does.


End file.
